A young mother sits across from me, dark circles betraying her exhaustion. She absently bounces an invisible baby—a muscle memory from months of soothing her colicky infant. Between halting descriptions of overwhelm and doubt, she asks the question I’ve learned to anticipate: “Do you have children?”
The words hang in the air. A familiar tightening coils in my chest. In that brief pause before I answer, her eyes scan me, taking in the details—the unwrinkled clothes, the flexible schedule, the absence of a tired fog behind my gaze.
“No, I don’t.” Steady voice. Practiced response. Those three words have taken years to own.
Her expression shifts—subtle but unmistakable. A slight narrowing of the eyes, a barely perceptible pulling back. I’ve cataloged these micro-reactions over a decade of practice: disappointment, recalibration, the occasional relief of not being judged by someone who “really knows.” But most often, doubt. The unspoken question: How will you understand me, really understand me, without having experienced motherhood?
A quiet disqualification. A verdict wrapped in politeness. And it doesn’t just happen in this room.
The Shadow of Unmet Expectations
Last spring, I attended a trauma conference. A panelist, a respected colleague, described how becoming a mother had “unlocked new dimensions of empathy” in her practice. “Having children broke my heart open in ways I couldn’t have imagined,” she said. “It’s transformed how I connect with my clients.”
Heads nodded around the room. Agreement passed between them like an unspoken language. The woman beside me whispered, “Isn’t that the truth,” to another attendee. I sat with my hands folded, absorbing the familiar weight of exclusion. If motherhood was the key to some deeper well of understanding, where did that leave the rest of us?
In a field dedicated to honoring diverse human experiences, the hierarchy of emotional legitimacy persists. The assumption that childfree women remain somehow stunted in their capacity for nurturing isn’t just personally hurtful—it’s professionally undermining.
At a treatment team meeting last year, a supervisor suggested I take a particular client because “she might benefit from your undivided focus, since you don’t have the pull of children at home.” The words were framed as praise, but the subtext landed differently. My choice wasn’t seen as an intentional reflection of self-knowledge but as a fortunate accident that freed up more hours.
Other times, the assumptions cut deeper. “You just can’t understand until you’ve held your own baby,” a client told me once, her voice thick with postpartum exhaustion. Not meant to wound, but it landed like a verdict: a permanent disqualification from true empathy.
I don’t defend or apologize for my choices anymore. But every interaction leaves a mark—a small bruise where expectation meets reality.
The Gift of Standing Outside
What rarely enters these conversations is what childfree therapists bring precisely because of—not despite—their choice. The act of forging an identity outside powerful social narratives requires a particular kind of clarity. Making peace with perpetual misunderstanding demands its own resilience.
Maya came to me after seeing two other therapists about her grief over not having children. Both were mothers themselves. “They couldn’t sit with my regret,” she told me. “They kept suggesting solutions—adoption, egg freezing, surrogacy—as if my pain was a problem to solve rather than an experience to process.”
She looked at me warily. “Do you have kids?”
When I said no, she visibly relaxed. “Thank god,” she whispered. “I needed someone who wouldn’t be threatened by my grief.”
With Maya, I didn’t need to unconsciously defend my own life choices. I wasn’t offering reassurance to quiet my discomfort with roads not taken. I could sit with her in that space where certainty dissolves, where all paths involve some form of loss.
Months later, she told me, “I needed someone who could help me mourn without trying to talk me out of it.” One of the most profound compliments I’ve received.
The Insidious Myth of Maternal Instinct
The belief that women possess an innate “maternal instinct” persists even in progressive spaces. It binds women’s worth to reproduction, positioning motherhood as the ultimate fulfillment of feminine potential. In therapy, it manifests as the quiet assumption that women who mother somehow care more deeply.
I hear it in knowing looks about “mom intuition” and in clients who apologize for “bothering me with parenting issues I probably can’t relate to.” Not just a diminishment of my professional capacity, but a reinforcement of an old narrative.
Elena came to therapy after her teenage son’s suicide attempt, her body folded in on itself with anguish. “I’m supposed to know what to do,” she whispered. “I should instinctively know how to help him. Why don’t I?”
Her suffering was braided with shame—the crushing expectation that maternal instinct should be automatic and infallible.
Working with Elena required dismantling this myth. Motherhood is not an innate superpower. Emotional support is a skill, built with intention and practice. Separating those ideas helped her find solid ground.
I wonder if a therapist who was a mother might have found it harder to challenge that belief. When your identity incorporates motherhood, questioning its cultural construction becomes personally unsettling. My position outside that experience allowed us to challenge assumptions without resistance.
The Space Beyond Expectations
Stepping outside the prescribed path means reckoning with meaning in a different way. Parenting provides a built-in narrative arc: growth, legacy, continuity. Without it, purpose must be consciously cultivated rather than assumed.
I won’t pretend I never notice the trade-offs. I watch friends’ children grow, hear colleagues share stories of their teenagers’ triumphs, and acknowledge the experiences I won’t have. The path not taken is always visible. Not as regret, but as recognition.
But this very reckoning has deepened my work. My clients benefit from my comfort with uncertainty, my familiarity with forging identity beyond conventional frameworks, my practice in finding purpose outside prescribed roles. The work of defining myself outside cultural expectations has given me a particular sensitivity to others doing the same.
The truest nurturing transcends biology. It emerges in the ability to witness another’s experience without imposing a narrative. To hold space for pain without rushing to solutions. To see others as they are, not as projections of expectation.
That young mother wanted to know if I could understand her. If I could hold her experience with care.
Yes. Not despite my childfree status, but because of it.
